Oakland Mayor Jean Quan gave the state of the city speech at City Hall in Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, February 27, 2013.

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan gave the state of the city speech at City Hall in Oakland, Calif., on Wednesday, February 27, 2013.

Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

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A file photo of local residents walking the Oakmore stairs in the Oakmore district of Oakland.

A file photo of local residents walking the Oakmore stairs in the Oakmore district of Oakland.

Photo: Darryl Bush, The Chronicle

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Oakland: Quan's neighbors hire security

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Oakland Mayor Jean Quan's pledge to restore the Police Department to 803 sworn officers in the next five years isn't good enough for some of her neighbors in the Oakland hills.

Sixty-three homeowners on three streets in the city's Oakmore neighborhood, just a block from the mayor's home on Braemar Road, have hired a private security firm to patrol their blocks during daylight hours, when break-ins are most common. Next Monday, Melvin Road, Brentwood Road and Rosecrest Drive will have a bona fide neighborhood security patrol.

"This is a wonderful place to live," said Jonathan Klein, an attorney who was one of the original five homeowners who canvassed the neighborhood to find other neighbors willing to chip in for a private patrol. "I have two kids who go to Oakland public schools, and we love it here. I don't want to move to Lafayette, but given that Oakland police cannot defend us, we couldn't just sit there anymore and do nothing."

The group began meeting about seven weeks ago, soon after an emboldened burglar tried to enter a home on Rosecrest Drive occupied by two children before walking next door and trying to break into a neighbor's home. That incident was captured on high-resolution videotape and handed over to police who responded to the call 10 hours later. An Oakland police officer apologized for the inadequate response time and urged residents to do all they could to protect themselves.

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The message didn't fall on deaf ears.

Klein and his neighbors got busy. They met and began to organize themselves before fanning out to pitch the idea to their neighbors.

In early January, Taylor Pacheco - one of the organizers - e-mailed the mayor's office asking for regular police patrols in the neighborhood. No response.

They kept moving forward. When the Oakmore Homes Association declined to adopt a plan to hire a security firm, organizers took it directly to homeowners. When the campaign to sign up residents was over, 63 homeowners, or 3 out of every 4, on three streets had agreed to pay up to $800 annually to hire security to patrol their streets.

The organizers declined to provide details about the security plan, how many officers will be deployed or how often patrols will roll through the neighborhood.

For the father whose kids were home during the attempted break-in, for the neighbor who has endured three burglaries and for the dozen or so homes burglarized in the past year, the annual fee is a wise investment.

"For less than $800 a year, it's a low-risk investment that can only help our situation improve," said Stephen Pollack, one of the homeowners who organized the plan. It's going to be something visible that everyone will see."

When homeowners met last year to discuss the rise in burglaries and the advent of home-invasion robberies in hillside communities, initially there was a sense that it was yet another Oakland crime wave that would recede, said Pacheco. But when pictures of the suspect in the December break-in were posted on trees and poles around the neighborhood, it was a different story.

"Once people saw pictures of criminals casing people's house and pounding on the glass, it made it very real," Pacheco said.

It is real. Oakland police Sgt. Christopher Bolton said those three blocks fall within a zone in the hills that "experienced a large increase in residential burglaries last year. In fact, I would say that that specific beat, 22X, suffered a disproportionate amount of residential burglaries."

The department, Bolton added, hopes to work with the private security operation to give and receive "intelligence" on crime in the area.

Quan, in her State of the City speech last week, underscored a reality for residents that an army of police officers in blue rushing to their aid, or even adequate neighborhood police patrols, was at least five years away.

"We have people in this neighborhood who go into work late and come home early just so they can patrol the neighborhood," said Pacheco, a 39-year-old mother with two young children. "We can't live with this for five years."